


East Blue Lullaby

by printfogey



Category: One Piece
Genre: Companionship, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 12:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printfogey/pseuds/printfogey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simple song hailing from East Blue sung by three Strawhats at three different moments on the Grand Line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	East Blue Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written for a chaos thread hosted by [Naye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/naye). 
> 
> I think this one came out a bit clunky in the construction – not quite story-shaped, if you see what I mean. Concrit and other feedback much appreciated, as always.
> 
> Spoilers/setting: Set a good while back (actually, three or four whiles back). Spoilers up through Skypiea.  
> Flavour: Perhaps a bit melancholy; probably a little sappy.

ONE/THREE

Vivi stepped into the girls’ cabin, shaking off the snow from her hair and her jacket, but she stopped abruptly right by the threshold. She was surprised to hear low singing coming from the bed, where Usopp was sitting by Nami’s side, wrapped in a spare blanket. 

She tiptoed over to the small table by the bed, placed the covered dish of soup she’d been carrying on it, then stood there in silence while Usopp finished the song. Nami’s face still looked much too hot and sweating, her breathing shallow and unsteady. But she did seem to be asleep by now.

“Any change?” asked Vivi in a hushed tone.

Usopp glanced up at her, then bit his lip. “I don’t _think_ so,” he whispered back. “But – maybe I missed some little important sign. I don’t know anything about this.” He gave a deep, tired sigh. “Uh – She tried to get up at one point, but I just pushed her down again and said we’d take care of it. Whatever it was. It wasn’t hard at all to stop her.” He looked troubled by that. Vivi could understand that – Nami wasn’t an insane powerhouse like Luffy and Zoro (and probably Sanji as well, given his hunting earlier); but Vivi had fought beside her at Little Garden and Nami was by no means weak.

“Good,” she murmured. “That you could stop her, I mean. She’d probably have fallen at the first step, and in her condition – um–” That wasn’t a good thought. She took a deep breath, and went on, still quite softly, “I mean. She needs to stay put.” Of course, she was just stating the obvious. Vivi felt a flash of anger at herself. How come she’d never went to the trouble to learn more about how to care for sick people? Simply because they had such a good court doctor? That was a pitiful excuse. She’d managed to find out plenty of other useful things over the years, after all.

“Yeah,” mumbled Usopp. He was watching Nami again. “She was babbling all this stuff... a lot of it was hard to make out, but she kept saying she had to take care of the tangerine trees. I’m not sure if she meant the ones on the ship or back on her home island.”

“Oh? Are the trees here from her home island, too?” said Vivi, interested. She took the spare chair and moved it next to Usopp, then sat down.

“Mm-hm. Her sister owns a tangerine orchard,” he explained. Then he glanced at the soup. “I didn’t realise you’d bring that. I guess I should have tried to keep her up instead of going to sleep faster.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Vivi. “She needs rest more, I think... I’m not sure if she’ll manage to eat anything, either. Anyway, Sanji said the lid will keep it hot for a good while yet. And it should be good to eat even if it goes cold.”

He nodded, making no move to leave yet. There were a few moments of slow, pensive silence. The cold was creeping in through the room.

“That was a lullaby you were singing right now, wasn’t it?” she asked him.

Usopp let out an embarrassed laugh. “Y-yeah. I don’t really know why I did that. Kinda stupid, I guess. I mean, she’s sick but she’s not a kid.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” mumbled Vivi. “It helped her sleep, right?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe it didn’t make any difference. Although...” He rubbed his nose thoughtfully, then twiddled his fingers a bit. “Um... I got the feeling she might know it from before. I guess that’s what I was hoping for... She seemed to try to join in, for a moment.”

“If so, I bet it really did help her fall asleep, then,” said Vivi, smiling at him. “I’m sure the ones Dad and Nurse sang to me when I was little would work that way on me, still.”

“Your mom didn’t sing for you?”

She shook her head, not dropping her smile. “She might have, but I can’t remember. I was less than one year old when she died.”

His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said in a very small voice. “I’m” – he had to clear his throat here, and when he went on she could hear the effort as he tried to keep his voice down still. “I’m real sorry.”

She looked down at her hands. “Don’t be. I was too little. I never knew her.” Yet her own voice was getting thick now. She had said this line a few too many times, perhaps.

“That’s still–” mumbled Usopp, then stopped himself, pausing momentarily. “Uh – well. Okay. Anyway,” his voice turned stronger again, with some forced brightness in it, “I heard the song from Mom and _maybe_ from Dad too, I’m not sure. Maybe! Mom knew lots of lullabies and I liked all of them, but I liked this one the most. Even though it’s really short and a simple. And maybe Nami heard it from her mom too, when she was little.”

Vivi pulled her legs up, curling up in the chair for warmth. “Could you sing it again?” she suggested, voice going down into a whisper. “I’d like to hear it, too.”

Another look of surprise, and he opened his mouth for a second – but then he closed it, swallowed, and smiled at her in a’ let’s-try-to-be-cheerful’ way. He nodded, and started to sing, his reedy teenaged voice softening into the hushed tone and the rocking, steady beat of the lullaby. She listened attentively, though her eyes were mostly settled on Nami.

Usopp began with the first short verse.

_“There’s a little boat_  
 _Sailing out from the harbour,_  
 _Going out to sea,_  
 _Going out to sea.”_  


Then he went on with the rest. At the end his stomach growled abruptly - probably helped along by the delicious smell of the cucumber soup – and he got up from the chair at last with a sheepish smile.

Vivi looked up at him. “We _will_ find a doctor on the next island,” she said, as forcefully as she could while still keeping her voice down. 

He nodded seriously. “Of course we will.” A slight pause. “A really good one, too!” he asserted, smiled at her over his shoulder, and ambled out, the snow falling in for a couple of seconds as the door opened and closed. She thought she could hear him humming.

Spreading the spare blanket he’d left behind around her, she took over the vigil after feeling Nami’s forehead again and flinching from the warmth. The song was tucked away in the back of her head.

 

TWO/THREE

Some adventurous weeks later, an old familiar tune turned up in Nami’s head from what seemed like out of nowhere. She was by then the lone conscious Strawhat on board the Going Merry, which she was trying to take out of Upper Yard on a stream of cloud milk. Looking at Sanji and Usopp first made her nauseous with empathy and terror – there they were, lying out on deck, burned and shocked by the attack of the horribly powerful God Ener. Then she’d swallowed severely several times and got to work on bandaging them up, well knowing they’d need more thorough treatment. But Chopper was deep within the jungle of this forbidden place, hunting for gold with Luffy, Zoro and Robin. 

The lullaby came into her thoughts when she worked, and when she was finished and sat back, she almost started to sing it. She wouldn’t really mind if old man Gan Phol and his flying horse heard her. But fear stopped her, then; a sense of danger insisting she needed to be on her guard.It turned out to be right, too, as two round priest freaks turned up and attacked her. Later, Conis and her father arrived with welcome assistance; but Nami’s nerves stayed on edge, raw with the responsibility of looking out for her wounded crewmates in this terrifying place. She pushed the tenderness back for now, steadying her ClimaTact and ready for battle.

Yet, hours later, sitting on a small cloud with Luffy while the sounds of the great golden bell filling the sky, the song pushed back at her again. There was no reason to sing it – no-one to put to sleep. Luffy was exhausted but not sleepy, lying supine on the tiny cloud, listening to the bell with a serene smile. 

Perhaps it was the peacefulness in the air that brought out the song Bellemère used to sing for her and Nojiko; perhaps, also, it was her tiredness and supreme relief that made the self-consciousness drop away, as if falling through the clouds without a trace.

_“Out to sail the world_  
 _and find treasure as cargo,_  
 _Going out to sea,_  
 _Going out to sea,”_

she sang, along with the other verses. Most of it was drowned out by the chimes of the bell – but to her ears at least, the lullaby went well with that beat. And Luffy closed his eyes and grinned widely, one arm raised high, fingers spread towards the sky.

 

THREE/THREE

It had been the longest day of her life. She felt deeply worn out and tired – but her friends were in a lot worse shape than her; had battled harder and longer, all for her sake. So she felt the least thing she could do was stay up by their bedside, as they lay patched up and snoring in one big room in the palace. And before very long, she found herself humming the lullaby Usopp had taught her back when Nami was sick. 

Vivi had always been good at learning things by heart, and the song was very short and simple in any case. The words came along with the tune without any hard work to recall them. She sang it to all of them during that night, as the unspeakably sweet sound of the rain outside filled the roof, making the tune fit the rain’s rhythm. 

During the next couple of days, she sang it again to Luffy alone. It was probably silly, given how deeply he was sleeping already – and he (battle-scarred all over; hands bloody; signs of recent poisoning, dehydration and stabbing, as the court doctor had told her with horror in his eyes) was certainly no child, no matter what a first impression might tell people. 

But silly or not, she still felt like singing it to him, to her captain and friend. After the first and second verse, she paused for a minute. Outside, the raindrops had finally ceased and the city noises filtered in – all the busy clanging, thumping, shouting, trampling and a hundred other sounds of a country that had begun the long, arduous road to putting itself back together.

Then she finished the song, her voice slowing down and sinking even lower for the third verse.

_“...But when it turns cold,_  
 _It turns back into harbour,_  
 _Coming home to me;_  
 _Coming home to me.”_

\---

**Author's Note:**

> Note: After I'd first posted this one-shot, I eventually wound up re-using the lullaby in chapter 13 of my fic "Absence", but that doesn't mean these two fics are necessarily in the same continuity. (Or at least, this fic might be in "Absence"'s past, but "Absence" doesn't have to be in this fic's future.)


End file.
